(upbeat music) - Whoa, whoa.

Oh, okay, okay.

Man, this seriously seems like it should be so much easier.

I mean, it's just a stick and ball, but whoa, this takes some serious skills.

Lacrosse will be a demonstration sport at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.

But did you know that a stick and ball game like lacrosse was played by indigenous people all across North America?

The modern game, the one played by people all over the world started right here with Haudenosaunee.

The Haudenosaunee played lacrosse as a sacred medicine game and to honor and entertain the great creator.

For decades, traditional wooden sticks were crafted on the Tuscarora Reservation right near Niagara Falls.

Now a reservation, is a land set aside for different indigenous nations.

These nations are sovereign, self-governing, like a nation within a nation.

Members of the Six Nations even travel on their own passports.

Hold up.

Back when we talked about, the Great Law of Peace, I thought there were only five nations?

Remember, Hiawatha and the Peacemaker brought the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk together under the Great Law of Peace.

So how come now, there are Six Nations?

Well, I've got the scoop on that.

It's about land and a really long, long walk.

And you all know, land has always been at the heart of relations between Native Americans and the United States.

Let's take a look.

Early European explorers called the Americas the New World, but it was only new to them.

There were millions of people living here long before Columbus arrived.

He and other conquistadors came looking for riches but others came looking for new lives, freedoms, and lands.

Now, the land may have seemed uninhabited to the Europeans, but that's because diseases like tuberculosis and smallpox had already killed millions of indigenous people.

Whenever European colonists actually encountered indigenous peoples living their best lives, they still found ways to steal their land.

Settlers argued they weren't using their land correctly, but they had no idea what they were talking about.

Traditionally, Native Americans believed that nobody owned the land.

The land belonged to everyone who lived on it, and that's why we call them indigenous people.

They were on the land, with the land, long before anyone thought about sailing West.

So when Europeans tried to buy land off indigenous people, some of them laughed and said, "Yeah, you want to buy the sky too.

Hey, let me sell you that cloud over there."

Our indigenous neighbors were betrayed often but they kept moving forward, sometimes forced to leave their homes behind, and that's what happened to the Tuscarora Nation.

(peaceful music) Long before Europeans ever arrived in the Americas, relatives of the Haudenosaunee, called the Tuscarora, settled in North Carolina.

Their language and culture are similar to the Five Nations with some differences.

Tuscarora comes from the Haudenosaunee word "Skarureh," which means people who split the hemp.

Tuscarora ancestors were famous for processing the dogbane plant into tough fibers that can be used to make rope and cloth.

The Tuscarora were the dominant nation in North Carolina.

When the English settlers arrived in 1653, they lived peacefully alongside the Tuscarora for 50 years.

But as more and more English settlers pulled up, they began pushing into Tuscarora land.

They started fighting in the early 1700s and the English brought powerful weapons, guns, and cannons, and they armed the enemies of the Tuscarora.

The fighting escalated into the Tuscarora Wars, and with so much bloodshed, Tuscarora ancestors realized the safest thing for them to do was to ask their cousins, the Haudenosaunee, for protection under the Great Law of Peace.

Hundreds of Tuscarora men, women, and children packed up what they could carry and traveled over 700 miles on foot to New York.

The Tuscarora were embraced as the Sixth Nation and the Tuscarora Taken-In Belt was woven to make it official.

Their union is still in effect today, and the Six Nations remained a force to be reckoned with, providing life-saving assistance to George Washington at Valley Forge and protecting the town of Lewiston during the war of 1812.

We need to understand that countless nations like the Tuscarora were displaced.

As southern states were growing, they forced indigenous people from their lands.

Andrew Jackson wasn't the first to displace Native Americans, but he was the most aggressive.

In the 1830s, Jackson oversaw the removal of the Five Civilized Nations as they were known.

Over 50,000 people were kicked out of their homes, some in the middle of the freezing winter.

The journey west became known as the Trail of Tears, since so many Native Americans perished on the way.

There were even efforts to take reservations that belonged to the Seneca Nation in western New York.

Now, ultimately, those efforts failed partly thanks to a treaty.

(bell dinging) A treaty is like a law, an agreement between two sovereign nations.

After the Revolutionary War, the US government began making treaties with indigenous peoples.

Treaties helped indigenous people secure their rights.

But treaty negotiations weren't always fair or honest.

Often US representatives used alcohol to trick indigenous peoples to sign away huge chunks of land.

But you know, many of these treaties are still in place and are important tools for protecting indigenous rights.

In November 1794, the US government and the Haudenosaunee signed a historic treaty at Canandaigua, New York that recognizes Six Nations rights to land in New York state.

It was negotiated by George Washington's representatives and the Six Nations own representatives, sharp, intelligent, eloquent speakers, like my man, Red jacket, who said, "The business of this treaty is to brighten the chain of friendship between us and the 15 fires."

Now by 15 fires, he meant the 15 states of the US.

To seal the deal, the US gave the Haudenosaunee trade cloth as a sign of good faith, and the Haudenosaunee honored the treaty with the creation of the George Washington Wampum Belt.

But treaties did not guarantee that Native Americans were always treated fairly.

Justice Hugo Black wrote, "Great nations like great men should keep their word."

You see this, the two row Wampum Treaty, or Guswenta, shows how indigenous people believed they should have coexisted with the settlers, like two rivers running parallel.

Neither should try and steer the other ship, and they should run peacefully side by side.

Now, compare that to Captain Richard Henry Pratt, an American military officer, who summed up the view of many Americans at the end of the 1800s when he said, "Kill the Indian in him, but save the man."

Ouch.

Many states opened boarding schools where they sought to erase indigenous culture from children in order to Americanize them.

Many kids were taken against their will.

Their names would get changed, hair cut short, and they were forced to speak English.

Since the government worked so hard to erase indigenous identities, some scientists thought Native Americans might become extinct in the early 1900s.

But, oh, were they wrong?

(singing in foreign language) Indigenous people continue to celebrate their traditions, their language and culture.

Stadiums across the country are packed with lacrosse fans.

The Buffalo Bandits are five time champions, that's right.

And indigenous players have always been on the roster.

Every season, they host a Native American heritage night to honor indigenous players and the cultural importance of lacrosse.

Look at all these people rocking out and celebrating the great creator's game.

Let's go.

It's incredible how indigenous people persist in spite of everything they've been through.

That doesn't mean that this story is over.

Treaties are still binding no matter how long ago they were signed.

Yet, indigenous people are constantly forced to fight for the government to keep their word or honor the treaties.

Is that fair?

Are you aware of whose lands you're living on and what treaties are in effect around you?

Look into it.

Indigenous people are our neighbors, our athletes, our artists, scholars, our brothers, our sisters, our family, honoring the history and celebrating indigenous culture is an act of love.

Now, remember, history surrounds you and includes you.

So go ahead and make history.

Maybe someday I'll be telling your story, right here on "Compact History."

(upbeat music)